Detailed information about the COVID-19 Rapid collaboration call can be found in the Data Partner Pilot Call Description document.
The Rapid Collaboration Call was open between April 16th 12h00 CET and run until May 14th 17h00 CET.
Why ?
With the world fighting the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and dealing with rapidly growing numbers of COVID-19 patients worldwide, clinicians, scientists, governments and the public all want to know more about characterising patients with COVID-19, how best to manage their care, and if certain treatments are safe and effective.
Data and derived insights and evidence are the lifeblood of pandemic decision-making, whether clinically for patient care, or for governments in making the right decisions in responding to SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19. Outside of a pandemic, as well as during this one, real-world health data is often fragmented, siloed in poorly interoperable systems and requires considerable curation to work with. This call aims to address this.
On 26-29 March, the global Observational Health Data Science & Informatics (OHDSI) community conducted a COVID-19 study-a-thon, with ongoing analysis, to research the characterisation of COVID-19 patients, and analogues such as influenza, and to evaluate the safety profiles and potential efficacy of several drugs proposed for repurposing in treating SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19. This served as proof of concept in how standardising data can facilitate fast analysis supporting evidence-based decision-making.
Recognising the need for action now and going forward in responding to the pandemic, especially with regards to growing a collaboration community able to research the pandemic rapidly, EHDEN proposes to assist potential Data Partners who have representative and relevant COVID-19 clinical data. We propose to provide financial and technical support to assist with harmonising your data to the OMOP common data model, with a view to linking Data Partners together and with researchers for quicker open science on SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19.
Call details
We propose to provide financial and technical support to assist with harmonising your data to the OMOP common data model, with a view to linking Data Partners together and with researchers for quicker open science on SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19.
In this Rapid Collaboration Call, EHDEN is calling out to European Data Partners to apply through our portal via a short COVID-19 call application template, with a rapid turnaround review process. Selection will be via a panel of acknowledged experts in this bioinformatics field, and those successful:
- Receive a sub-grant from EHDEN of up to €50,000, based on evaluation of data complexity, to support the process of data harmonisation to the OMOP common data model and allied tools
- Are able to engage with an EHDEN COVID-19 Taskforce made up of technical experts with skills and experience to assist with remote harmonisation of data (under the current pandemic restrictions), meaning that applicants without the resources to support this will not be considered
- Will be invited to participate in COVID-19 research studies to accelerate our understanding of how to combat this pandemic and improve patient outcomes, so a main criteria for inclusion in this call is relevance and representativeness of COVID-19 data
Recognising that institutions holding COVID-19 data must be over-stretched in terms of clinical duties, the idea is that the overhead be minimal for them. EHDEN will therefore take care of data mapping and all tooling so that the data sets can be analysed throughout Europe for the benefit of all.
We hope that hospitals, clinics and other institutions holding relevant, recent COVID-19 data across Europe are in a position to collaborate and work with us and will be able to participate in this Call given the current situation.
Call results
During this COVID-19 specific rapid collaboration call for data partners, we've received 75 applications which were eligible according to our eligibility criteria. Of these, 25 data partners were selected, covering eleven different countries and at the time the call closed, contained data of over 1 million SARS-COV-2-tested patients; 228,000 of whom tested positive.
